


shade of today

by ErinNovelist



Category: Voltron: Legendary Defender
Genre: Alternate Universe - The Time Traveler's Wife, Angst, F/M, Fluff, Romance, Time Travel
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-07-30
Updated: 2018-07-30
Packaged: 2019-06-18 14:16:43
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 5,400
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/15487686
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ErinNovelist/pseuds/ErinNovelist
Summary: Lance leans back in his chair and crosses his arms against his chest. “So you’re telling me that someday soon, I’m going to start traveling back in some random girl’s timeline?”“It’s not random,” Allura presses and nudges his ankle with her toe. “It’s never been random. You once told me it’s like gravity: that big events pull you in.” She shrugs helplessly. “That’s how it is for me too. The more important something or someone is, the more I travel to them.”“Wait.” Lance’s eyes flash wildly. “You time travel too?”A laugh falls from her lips and into the space between them. “You think I’m from this time?” Lance tightens his grip on her hand as the truth crashes over him. “I travel too, but only to you.”“Why?”“What can I say?” Allura tells him. “Big events pull me in, and you were mine.”





	shade of today

_“I think we are one of those couples with a long story when people ask how we found each other. I will see her every now and then, and maybe one year, she’ll be with a different me, and the next year, I’ll be with a different her. And it’s gonna take a long time. And then it’s perfect. I’m in no rush.”_

 

*

  

When Allura is twenty-years-old, she meets Lance for the first time.

He’s behind the counter at the coffee shop down the street from her university, an apron wrapped around his waist as he takes an order from the customer at the register, and looking younger than she’s ever seen him. Her mind draws a blank as she rushes forward, pushes to the front of the line, and grabs ahold of his wrist before he can pull away. 

“Hello,” she says with a bright smile. 

He stares at her in confusion, quirking an eyebrow high. “Hi?”

There’s a moment of silence between them, the span of a handful of heartbeats, and then she’s leaning closer. “Do you… Do you know me?”

“I’m sorry?” Lance shakes his head and starts to pull away.

 “I love you,” she tells him, expression imploring. “Please don’t go.” 

“Oh?” A smile stretches across his face, and heavy-lidded eyes turn her inside out. “Tell me more.” 

Lance is eighteen and full of the charm and charisma that tears her apart, something that squirms under her skin like a live wire, and something she _doesn’t_ miss. But it’s still Lance, the person she loves with all her being, and she’ll take him no matter what age. 

“Over coffee,” she says. “Preferably when you’re not working. Tonight, maybe seven?” 

He smiles, and Allura’s heart picks up its pace. 

This is how it all starts.

 

*

 

It actually starts when Allura is six and picking flowers in the meadow behind her house, when an older man steps out from behind the old willow tree with an easy smile and kind eyes. He’s holding a purple monkeyflower, petals wet with the morning dew, and offers it to her. 

“Someone told me this is your favorite flower,” he says when her little hand brushes hers. “But I think blue poppies are better.” 

Allura manages an indignant huff. “Blue flowers are stupid.”

The man merely chuckles, shaking his head. “Maybe, maybe.” He holds out his hand for her to shake. “My name’s Lance. Do you mind if I stay here for a little bit and look at flowers with you?” 

Little Allura hesitates for a moment, her father’s voice echoing through her head about strangers and caution, but this man looks at her with that smile, and it’s like she’s known him her whole life, a part of her recognizing him instantly. 

“Sure. I’m Allura,” she murmurs, and the rest, they say, is history.

 

*

  

“So you’re my girlfriend, and you know I time travel,” Lance says incredulously over the rim of his coffee cup, like he doesn’t know which concept is more unbelievable. “How long has this been going on exactly?” 

“You’ve been with me all my life,” she tells him with a smile. Allura reaches out and grabs his free hand in the center of the table, intertwining their fingers together. “You’ve come more frequently in the last five years though. I think it’s because it’s closer to when you first met me.” 

“This is still a lot to take in.” Lance shakes his head, still dumbfounded. “It’s not every day that some pretty stranger comes up to me at work and tells me that she knows my deepest secret, that we’re dating, and that she knows all about my future.” 

“ _Our_ future,” she corrects. “You’ve known mine my whole life. I kind of like being on the other side of things.” 

Lance leans back in his chair and crosses his arms against his chest. “So you’re telling me that someday soon, I’m going to start traveling back in some random girl’s timeline?” 

“It’s not random,” Allura presses and nudges his ankle with her toe. “It’s never been random.”

“Trust me, it is, sweetheart, because I’d remember if I ever saw a pretty girl like you—” he begins and lets a leery grin stretch across his face. 

She kicks him hard enough to make him choke. “It isn’t. You once told me it’s like gravity: that big events pull you in.” She shrugs helplessly. “That’s how it is for me too. The more important something or someone is, the more I travel to them.”

“Wait.” Lance’s eyes flash wildly. “You time travel too?” 

A laugh falls from her lips and into the space between them. “You think I’m from this time?” Lance tightens his grip on her hand as the truth crashes over him. “I travel too, but only to you.” 

“Why?” 

“What can I say?” Allura tells him. “Big events pull me in, and you were mine.”

  

*

  

“I don’t think we’ve ever been the same age,” Allura tells him, when she is eighteen and he is eighteen. “It’s different.” 

“What’s the oldest you’ve seen me?” he asks as they amble down the snow-slick sidewalks towards the Italian café near Allura’s university. Lance is fresh from his spring semester while Allura is in the middle of her fall, her workload already increasing as she prepares for her finals. He carries her bag over his shoulder while she buttons up her jacket.

Allura bites her bottom lip in thought. “I think… twenty-eight maybe?” 

“That’s… a long time,” he muses. “I do this for over a decade?” 

“I’ve been doing it for longer,” she tells him with a sharp smirk. “Better catch up, darling.” 

Lance chuckles, shoulders shaking. “And how long have you been traveling?” 

“I started when I was ten.” 

“And you only go to my future?” 

“Your future, a different reality, a parallel universe.” Allura shrugs helplessly, burying her face in the worn knit scarf. “We’ve never figured out what it is. Time travel or universe hopping or something else. Never really needed a label. We don’t even know if we’re in the same timeline.” 

Lance thinks about that for a long while. “So I could be in my sixties when you’re born. Or you could be long dead right now.” 

“Or I could be in a completely different reality,” she says softly. “There’s an infinite number of them you know: ones that are completely different, others only slightly. One where we took a left instead of a right, where I studied political science instead of psychology. You just never know.” 

Lance whistles low. “Wow. You’ve thought a lot about this.” 

Allura presses her lips into a thin line. “I’ve spent most of my life waiting for you. I’ve had time.” 

 

*

  

Allura is twenty-one and sitting with a twenty-three-year-old Lance on a rooftop along the shoreline of Varadero beach. The B&B belongs to a friend of Lance’s family and one he likes to visit a few times during the summer when he’s on break from graduate school.

“So you ever been here before?” Lance asks as he takes a sip of the cinnamon whiskey he’s taken up onto the roof with them. “Little bit different than the city, I presume.”

 Allura leans back on her hands, crosses her legs, and tosses her head back to stare at the night sky. In the distance, the moon bobs above the waves. It’s definitely not like the city. 

“Once,” she tells him and thinks back to when she was twelve and walking through the meadow behind her house, only to suddenly find herself on a beach in Cuba with Lance laying in the sand. It’d only been for a moment, where she managed a short wave, and was thrust back into her own timeline. “But it was nothing like this.” 

“It’s really something, isn’t it?” He hands her the bottle of whiskey, and she takes a quick sip, wincing as the bitter taste burns her throat. “Don’t get a view like this back home.”

 Allura’s eyes rest on him, trim and toned body laid out across the roof, all long legs and dark skin. “You definitely don’t,” she tells him, probably a little tipsy but far past caring. 

Lance can feel her gaze on him and takes the bottle from her hands, tossing back a shot and choking it down to give himself an excuse for his burning cheeks. Shoulders shaking, Allura laughs and leans forward to press a kiss to his cheeks, to the tip of his nose, and then to his lips. 

He smiles into the kiss. “You’re the best view I’ve ever seen.” He pulls away and rests his forehead against hers, breathing heavily. “I wish I could see you every minute of every day.” 

Allura sucks on her bottom lip and pushes Lance backwards until she can lay across his chest. She can hear his heartbeat through the thin fabric of his shirt, the steady _pitter-patter_ that reminds her that he’s real and he’s here. Sometimes she thinks she’ll wake up one day and this will all be a dream—time travel, Lance, and their love—but then she jumps again, and he’s there, right where he should be.

“I wish I could wake up next to you every day,” she tells him softly. He cards his fingers through her tangled-curls, and tears prickle in the corner of her eyes. “I love you so much.” 

She tries to quell the fears bubbling up inside her, her heart beating against her ribcage like a wild animal wanting to get out. What if this is all their life is—waking up alone with the ghost of the other in their bed—and they never get the chance to make something real out of it? What if the time traveling stops, and she never sees Lance again after this moment? What if this is all they have? 

“I graduate next week,” she says. “Can you come?” 

He looks at her sadly. “I’ll try,” he tells her and presses a kiss to the top of her head. “I always do.” 

Sometimes that’s all they can do.

 

*

 

Allura can’t remember when she first fell in love with Lance. He’s always been a part of her life—since the moment in the meadow to the last night they spent together in her father’s cabin up near the mountains. All she knows is that she’s loved him for as long as she’s known him, which is basically forever at this point. At twenty-four, you’d think she’d know better than to love a person she can never keep.

But that’s a lesson Allura’s been trying to learn for nearly twenty years to no avail.

“Do you ever wonder if this is the last time we’ll see each other?” Allura asks him on the eve of her twenty-fifth birthday in a mess of sheets and skin, wrapped in his arms as a storm brews outside. 

Lance at twenty-seven simply shrugs like he has no care in the world and holds her tighter. “I don’t have time to worry. I’ve been traveling my whole life, and if there’s one thing I know, it’s that I have to value my time in the present.” 

“But is this my present or yours?” 

“It doesn’t matter,” he says and presses a kiss to her crown. “All that matters is that you’re here, and so am I, and that we’re together.”

 

*

 

“Can I kiss you?” Lance asks while they stand in the pouring rain, when she’s seventeen and he’s nineteen. “Or is that too weird?”

There’s no proper response as Allura throws her arms around his neck and pulls him close. She kisses him then, and it’s wet and messy, maybe from the rain, who really knows, but it’s wonderful and beautiful because it’s something they’ve both been waiting for. When they pull away, both are gasping for breath. 

Allura laughs, giggles spilling into the space between them, as she rests her damp head against his soaked shirt. “God… I’ve been wanting to do that since I was fifteen.” 

A shiver goes down his spine. “You’ve loved me for a long time.” 

“You’ve just…” Her voice trails off as she struggles to find the words. “You’ve always been there. I don’t think… I ever had a choice not to.” 

“Do you ever regret that?” he asks. 

Allura shakes her head. “Never.” 

  

*

  

Allura doesn’t love Lance just because the universe told her so but rather because he’s ingrained himself in every part of her life. While the concept of him has always seemed impossible, he makes himself known in little ways that matter, sometimes just to prove he exists, and others just to make her happy. It’s these things that make her fall for him. 

When she makes it to the state rugby tournament, he’s standing on the sidelines with a noise maker he’d snagged from the convenience store down the way. When she’s drowning in finals during her freshman year at the university, he comes in with an energy drink and a study guide. During her graduation, he’s seated front row away from the rest of her family, blowing her a kiss and mouthing “ _I love you!”_ for her eyes alone. 

It’s every afternoon in the meadow pressing flowers between the pages of one of her father’s old dictionaries. It’s plucking tomatoes from Lance’s overgrown garden back home when they’re ripe and dousing each other with the hose. It’s hours spent over textbooks as she studies for her entrance exams. It’s her at fifteen teaching him at twenty to skip rocks in the lake near the park he lives next to only for him to turn around at twenty-four and teach seven-year-old Allura the same thing. 

It’s all these things and more—the way he comes to the big moments in her life, the way she makes things big moments in his. 

Allura wonders sometimes how she got so lucky to have someone who’s always there, and even when he disappears, there’s the burning hope he’ll come back. How he always keeps his promises. How he’s her constant support. How he never fails to make her smile. How his kindness shines through in everything he does. How soft and tender he is when she’s a little girl How much he loves her and fights for her in the present. 

Allura may not know _when_ she fell in love with Lance, but she definitely knows _why_.

  

* 

 

The first time Allura time travels, she’s ten and afraid. 

She’s skipping through the meadow to head home as the sun burns low on the horizon, and suddenly it’s daybreak and she’s in the middle of the city full of car horns, cement walkways, and lots of people. She doesn’t know when she is—let alone _where_ —but before she can panic, there’s hands on her shoulders and a man kneeling in front of her. 

“Allura?” Lance whispers, blue eyes like the sky, soft and kind. 

“W-Where am I?” she presses as tears trek down her cheeks. “I was at home, a-and then I—” She snaps her eyes shut as a sob bubbles up from her chest. “I w-want to go _home_.” 

Her gaze skitters to the people around her, wearing weird clothing and weird hair and weird shoes with weird voices and weird phones, and she doesn’t know if she’s thirty years in the past or thirty years in the future. It only makes her press closer to Lance and wrap her arms around his neck, holding on tightly as her whole body shakes, because he has a habit of disappearing when she doesn’t want him to, and she _won’t let him go_ now. 

“It’s okay, it’s okay.” He rubs a hand down her back to comfort her. “You’re fine, you’re safe, I promise.” 

“What happened?” she whimpers.

Lance looks at her, twenty-one and quiet, and simply smiles. “You time traveled.”

 

*

 

Allura is twenty-six when she travels to a brick house at the end of a winding cobblestone road. It’s got a sloping roof and white trick, maple trees bending gracefully over the drive, and a willow tree out back with a tire swing on a low hanging branch. The late morning sunlight filters through the leaves and a spring breeze brushes past. 

Cocking her head to the side, she ambles up the drive and around the back of the house, trying to make sense of where she is. In all her travels, she’s never been here before, and Lance has never told her about it. 

She just passes the set of French doors when she catches sight of movement inside. Hesitation has never been her strong suite, especially when she’s traveling, as she never knows how much time she has to do what she needs to do. Usually Lance is somewhere close, but something about this time feels different. 

The French doors open to a dining table where two people sit—a man with black hair pulled back in a low ponytail and another woman with dark skin and white hair. They’re both sipping from coffee mugs and pondering over open catalogs strewn across the table in front of them. The man says something that causes the woman shake with laughter as she scoots her chair back and makes a move to stand. 

As she turns to the side, Allura lets a gasp fall from her lips. 

She recognizes the woman as _herself_ —laugh lines etched into her face, hair piled up in a messy ponytail, and belly swollen with child. 

A single tear trails down her cheek as she continues to stare, speechless and shocked, at the older Allura who’s happy and with a man other than Lance. Her hands are shaking as they clenched the fabric of her shirt in tight fists, heart thundering like it’s going to break through her ribs, the world tilting on its axis as reality crashes over her. 

She’s pregnant. He’s not Lance. 

(She doesn’t _want_ this. She’s never wanted this. Her whole life—it’s only ever been Lance.) 

There’s a pull within her, the universe trying to take her back, but she fights it even as her world falls apart. She needs to see more, get her answers to questions she hasn’t even formed yet, has to learn how to change this future because she _doesn’t want it_.

As everything begins to fade and she finds herself between one time and the next, the older Allura turns around and stares out the French doors, catching her gaze before she can fully disappear. The Allura inside only presses her lips in a thin smile and raises her hand in a goodbye, the silver ring on her finger glinting under the kitchen light. 

“ _It’s okay_ ,” she mouths to her. “ _It’s gonna be okay_.”

  

*

 

Allura doesn’t like to think about all this ending. 

If she has her way, they’ll keep jumping in and out of each other’s lives forever. It’s not much of a life together, but it’s theirs, and _damn it_ , that matters to her. She’d spend the rest of her life being a ghost in his, the figure found in all his photographs, the voice on his answering machine when he’s out and she can’t bother him, the memory that he goes back to when he needs to. 

Allura would do it all if it means she gets to keep him. 

She wonders what Lance thinks. She knows he loves her, but the question is… _is it enough_? 

(For her, it always has been.)

 

*

  

“What’re you doing?” Lance asks her at twenty-seven, breathless and smiling between her kisses. 

She’s twenty-six and desperate, convinced she’s seen the end, where she’s thirty-something with a family of her own and no Lance in sight. It makes her hungry for what she has _now_ , and she wants to lose herself in it just to hide form the bubbling future and what it has in store for them. 

 _It’s funny_ , Allura thinks to herself, _I’ve never been scared of the future before._

Inside her bedroom, she pulls him down by the collar of his shirt and crushes her lips to his, wet and hard with teeth and spit. He tastes like vanilla chap stick and coffee as he’d traveled in the middle of his breakfast, and _God_ … she just wants to savor this. He hefts her against the bedroom door, her legs wrapping around his waist as she pulls her blouse overhead, and he buries his face against her chest 

“I missed you,” she tells him between harsh gasps, shoulders shaking. He only smiles and spins around, throwing her onto the bed before crawling atop her. 

More clothes start coming off, exposing miles of warm skin she’s never once taken for granted. He sighs as he pushes into her, breathes turning shaky, but his kisses turn more ferocious. Hip pumping, toes curling, bed rocking—her nails dig into his shoulder blades as she holds onto him for dear life.  It makes tears prickle in the corners of her eyes at the thought that she could someday lose all of this.

“I love you, you know that, right?” he says as he pulls away, staring down at her in awe. 

Allura can’t even muster a response, only nudging him closer until she can capture his lips with hers, opening her mouth and licking inside. Lance smiles into it and reaches between them with one hand, cupping her sex and pressing until the world turns white. They lose themselves in the ebb of the tide, the sheets turning sticky with sweat, until her thighs clench around against his hips, back arching off the bed, and she comes hard.

When Allura comes back to herself, and the world seems to right itself, she curls up in Lance’s arms and buries her face in the crook of his neck. “I want you,” she murmurs against his skin. “I love you. I want to spend the rest of my life with you.” 

Lance is silent for a moment before he laughs. “Did… Did you just _propose_?”

“Yes,” she says because she can’t imagine what else she can do. 

“Isn’t that my line?” he teases in jest. 

Allura snorts. 

(God, she loves him.) 

 

*

  

That first morning after, when she’s twenty and full of hope, she stares at the twenty-two-year-old Lance sleeping beside her, who’s hogging the blankets and drooling on the pillow, and can’t help but laugh. “I’m going to love you forever,” she tells him, and it’s a more than a promise or far-fetched dream. 

It’s always been a fact. 

 

*

 

Lance is twenty-eight and tosses her a small black box when she collapses onto the couch in her new apartment. They’ve spent the past few hours moving in the last of her things in, and the adventure of unpacking still awaits, but it’s been a long day and she doesn’t know how long Lance has left. 

“What’s this?” She takes the box and turns it over, gears in her head turning slowly, because she’s twenty-seven and tired. “Was this packed somewhere?” 

“No,” he says with a soft smile and plucks it out of her fingers. Allura lets out an indignant squawk, trying to yank it back, but he presses her back against the couch with a single finger to her forehead. “Just hold on a second.” 

“Is it mine?” Allura bites her bottom lip, trying to picture where he’s swiped it from. She doesn’t recall that box among her jewelry when she packed it all up.

“Well, it ought to be,” he tells her. “Just depends what your answer is.” 

The world shudders to a halt. Her hands fly up to cover her mouth, and she draws a blank, unable to think of any words. 

Lance slips off the couch and rocks back on his haunches, propping up on one knee in front of her. “When I was twenty-five, I went back to when you were seventeen and met your father before…” His voice trails off, and Allura doesn’t need him to finish. She lost her father when she was nineteen. “Anyway, I told him you’d proposed to me in the future and asked for your mother’s rings.” 

A half-formed sob falls from his lips before he can choke it down. She's still frozen

“He didn’t know what to say, and let me tell you, I’ve never see that man speechless, Allura.” He laughs, and his eyes are dark and wet. He’d loved Alfor too, and she remembers the two often sharing a cup of coffee or beer when Lance would visit during her childhood and teenage years. Lance had always been the one secret that Alfor knew.

“You _didn’t_ —” Allura starts to say, voice full of tears. 

“I asked his permission. I got your mother’s rings. You asked last time, so I think now’s my turn, so Allura, will you—” A smile stretches across his face, and there’s tears dripping down his cheeks, and there’s tears against her lips as she kisses him breathless. 

“ _Yes_ ,” she tells him and can’t stop laughing or crying. “It’s _always_ been yes.” 

 

*

 

They have a small ceremony that Coran officiates. 

Lance invites his friend, Hunk, a burly man with kind eyes who smells like, to be his best man. Allura brings her cousin, Romelle, who’s quiet but loves to smile, to be her maid of honor. The two whisper behind their hands when Lance at twenty-eight presses a kiss to twenty-eight-year-old Allura’s lips, the “ _I do_ ” lost somewhere between. 

“Fucking finally,” Hunk groans. “I had to hear about this ever since he proposed two weeks ago.” 

“She’s been waiting for two years,” Romelle says back. “I think we win.” 

Allura and Lance pull away and smile. 

It’s been a decade since they were the same age. 

 

*

  

Allura often wonders if there’s a limit to how much you can love someone. She wonders if there’s a limit to how long you can love someone. 

At thirty, her mother’s wedding ring burns like silver fire on her finger wherever she goes, a constant reminder of who put it there. She thinks about Lance, tries to picture her future where _they_ don’t exist, but it’s impossible. 

Every time she thinks about the future, where she’s thirty-something and with another man, she can’t even imagine what life without Lance will be like. It’s like trying to imagine a world where the sun doesn’t shine and the sky isn’t blue, where the road at her childhood home isn’t cracked with age, where the purple monkeyflowers on her porch don’t grow after the rain falls. 

It’s impossible, so she tries not to think about it. 

She also tries not to think about the fact that it’s been six months since Lance last traveled. 

(She tries but fails every time.)

 

*

  

She’s thirty-one and married to a ghost.

It’s been six months since she last traveled.

 

*

 

The last time she sees Lance is when he’s twenty-two and in love with a girl who burst into his coffee shop one day just to tell him that she loved him. 

They go to brunch and then kissed goodbye on the sidewalk, and Lance fingers her ring and promises to catch up. “I think this is the oldest I’ve ever seen you,” he notes, and she’s tries not to cry, tries to pretend that there’s so much more future between them, tries not to think about how she’s going to lose him. 

“You’ll see me older someday,” she says, and this time it is a far-fetched dream because if there’s one thing she can’t promise him, it’s time. 

Lance stares at her with those blue eyes like stars. “You know,” he tells her. “I think this is the happiest I’ve ever seen you.”

Allura can’t even form a proper response, only huffs a soft laugh and presses her lips against her wedding ring.

 

*

 

Allura is thirty-three and has started a new job teaching at the university. Her mother’s wedding ring still sits on her finger because she made a promise when she was twenty and refuses to break it. She’s unpacking her desk supplies from a box and adjusts her new nameplate with a soft sigh, the golden metal glinting in the sunlight streaming from the window. 

There’s a knock against her door, pulling her from her morning musings. “Hey, Dr. Garrett wants to know if you want to come to lunch with us. He invites all the new professors, and… Allura?” 

The voice strikes her deep inside, bringing her heart stammering to a stop. She twists around on her heel and a bright smile overtakes her face. “Lance!” she cries and wraps her arms around his neck, his own holding her tight against his chest. “I didn’t think I’d ever see you again!”

“I can’t believe you’re here,” he gushes to her, eyes wide and brimming with questions. “I haven’t traveled in three years, and the last time I saw you, you were seven in the meadow, and… and I thought I’d _lost_ you.”

“Wait, wait.” She presses her hands on his shoulders, trying to keep him still. “What do you mean you haven’t traveled?” 

“I don’t know,” Lance tells her, running hand through his hair, already messy to begin with. “It just _stopped_. Dr. Slav thinks it’s because the clock genes got shocked back into place or something, or maybe it just… I _don’t know_ , but I am so happy you’re here, I—” 

“I haven’t travelled in two years,” she says. 

Just to check, she glances around her office. It’s still her nameplate, still her box, still the picture of her father in the corner, still the purple monkeyflowers and blue poppies on the windowsill.

“Then how are you?” he asks her. 

“I don’t know,” she tells him. “But this is my timeline and my reality. I woke up and came to work. I’m here because this is where I’m supposed to be.” 

Lance bites his bottom lip and shakes his head. “Then if you didn’t travel, and I didn’t travel…”

Then… 

Then… 

Allura doesn’t waste her time thinking. She grabs him by the collar and pulls him forward, kissing him and kissing him, until he’s laughing and so is she, tears streaming down both of their faces. 

“You’re here,” he whispers against her forehead. “You’re really _here_.” 

“I’ve always been here,” she tells him and intertwines their fingers together, the silver of their matching wedding bands glinting in the sunlight.

 _Same timeline, same universe, same Lance—all mine_.

 

* 

 

She’s thirty-five and sitting at the kitchen table of her and Lance’s home a mile from the university. Her wedding ring rests on a chain around her neck, fingers too swollen from pregnancy to be much use. Across from her, Keith, her neighbor, smiles around the rim of his coffee mug and points to a picture in the catalog. 

“I still think you should get this crib,” he tells her. “That’s what Shiro and I got for Kevin. It’s sturdy and does its job.” 

She pushes herself to her feet, eager for some more tea, still laughing. “It’s fire engine red, Keith.” 

“There’s nothing wrong with red,” he grumbles under his breath. 

Her giggles spill into the space between them as Lance comments from the other side of the room, “How about blue?” 

“You already got the room painted blue,” she snipes back. “We don’t need it looking like the Cookie Monster threw up in there.” 

“Hey,” he says and peers around the cabinet, a wrench in hand. “There’s nothing wrong with blue. I— _oh._ ” Lance pauses, blue eyes softening as he stares out the French doors and into their yard. 

Allura simply sighs and turns on her heel, already knowing well enough what she’ll find. Her own wet eyes stare back as the younger Allura begins to fade away, hands clenched to her chest in despair. 

She smiles and waves goodbye, quietly telling her, “It’s okay. It’s gonna be okay.” 

(It’s not much, but the younger her has a lifetime to figure out what she means.) 

Warm arms loop around her waist, lips pressing against the nape of the neck. “You weren’t kidding.” 

“I told you,” she says and leans back against Lance’s shoulder. “She’s going to be very worried for a while.” 

“I’m sorry I worried you.”

She turns around in his arms and kisses him—slow and soft. “It’s worth it,” she whispers against his skin. “You’ve always been worth it.” 

And the rest, they say, is history.

 


End file.
